


New Kids On The Block

by shadedScribe



Series: Shit, Let's Be Superheroes [1]
Category: DCU (Comics), Homestuck, Teen Titans - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Crossover, Gen, and Alternia was another one of the DCU's alien planets, basically it's what if the beta kids had superpowers and lived in the DCU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-28
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23887363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadedScribe/pseuds/shadedScribe
Summary: Mindfang and Trident, the new alien supervillains in town, have been running circles around the Teen Titans and recruiting more villains to their nefarious band of bandits. Fortunately, Seattle's latest bunch of teenage superheroes, the Beta Team, is here to help.
Series: Shit, Let's Be Superheroes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1876468
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, look, I actually posted something. Quarantine hasn't killed my motivation to write, but it has killed my already tenuous ability to focus on any particular project, so it's basically been like *Soldier TF2 voice*"I have done nothing but start new WIPs for three days." Oh, well, they'll all be finished eventually.
> 
> Anyway, here's a crossover, wherein the Beta Kids are kids living in the DCU who happen to be friends and have superpowers, and Alternia joins the stable of alien planets contributing both superheroes and alien invaders for the Justice League to beat up at some point. Mindfang and Trident are the villain aliases of Vriska and Meenah, who left Alternia for reasons to be revealed later. It's set in the year of *indistinct mumbling*, shortly before Dick becomes Nightwing. Everyone's like 18 here, give or take a year or two because they're not all exactly the same age. Enjoy!

“I hate those frickin’ dice!” Gar yelled frustratedly as the bedraggled Teen Titans piled back into Titans Tower. 

They had been making another attempt to capture the Pirates, a new group of supervillains that had been making daring robberies all across the American West lately. Things had been going alright, until Mindfang, the new villain who seemed to be the Pirates’ de facto leader, had gotten another perfect throw on her magic dice and conjured up a massive wave of seaweed-laden water that had tied up the Titans just long enough for the Pirates to make off with a massive haul from the San Francisco Mint.

“It is very frustrating.” Kori agreed.

“Mindfang and Jinx’s collective power over luck is difficult to overcome.” said Raven.

“Yeah, and now that Garth’s stuck in Atlantis for the time being, we don’t have anyone who can follow Trident underwater.” Vic groused.

“And Wally’s still out in space with the rest of the League.” Roy added.

“Listen,” said Dick, raising his voice a little to cut off any further complaints, “I know we all had a rough day, but turning this into a whine session won’t help anything. Let’s all get cleaned up, relax a little, and figure out what we’re going to do next. I’ll order pizza.”

About an hour later, the eight of them, now rather cleaner and more relaxed, gathered over a couple of pizzas in the common room. They were mostly uninjured; Donna had a nasty bruise on her cheek where Trident had hit her, and Vic was still a little singed from Cheshire blowing him up earlier, but that was the extent of any real injuries.

“Alright,” said Dick, looking up from helping Kori brush the tangles out of her hair, “let’s go over the problem.”

“The Pirates hit a lot of targets over a wide area, and they’re in and out fast, so it’s hard to catch up with them.” Karen started.

“And when we do catch them, they have the heavy hitters to hold us off long enough for Mindfang to pull off some lucky escape.” Roy continued.

“Not to mention that we don’t know a whole lot about Mindfang or Trident.” Donna added. “Do we even know if they’re from Earth?”

“I had a thought about that.” said Kori. “I’ve racked my brains about all of the alien species I ever learned about, and although I’ve never met one in person before, I think they might be trolls.”

“Trolls?” asked Dick.

“That’s what everyone calls them.” said Kori. “They have grey skin and horns, and the higher-caste ones have extreme strength, not to mention that they randomly develop special powers almost as often as humans do. They’re from a planet called Alternia, and they’ve apparently been conquering a great many nearby planets recently.”

“Well, that checks out with what we know about Mindfang and Trident.” said Dick. “Though it raises the question of what they’re doing on Earth.”

“The real question is how are we gonna catch them.” said Karen. “This group is way too dangerous to let them keep running free.”

Dick couldn’t help but agree. Even without the danger posed by the two aliens, the rest of the Earthling supervillains that had been recruited to the Pirates were still some pretty rough customers.

“We’re at the point where I’d be willing to collaborate with another superteam just to make sure we covered more areas, but the League is off-planet and everyone else is busy covering the slack.” Roy groused.

“Hey, not everyone.” said Gar, sitting up suddenly. “What about the Beta Team?”

“The who?” asked Roy.

“You know, those new guys up north.” Gar elaborated.

“The Beta Team is a new team of teenage superheroes that’s been operating in the Seattle area recently.” Dick elaborated more helpfully. “They haven’t worked much with the more established teams, but apparently they’ve tangled with Mindfang and Trident a few times and come out ahead.”

“There’s a new team operating just up the coast and we haven’t tried to make friends with them yet?” Donna asked.

“We’ve been busy.” Dick shrugged apologetically.

“Well, there’s no time like the present.” said Vic. “Especially if they can handle Mindfang. I swear, if I have to get blindsided by those dice one more time…”

“You said it.” Gar agreed.

“Alright then.” said Dick. “I’ll get in touch with them.”

\------------------

The next morning, the Titans were waiting together on the lawn for the Beta Team to arrive. Donna and Kori were passing the time with a light spar, while Raven meditated and Karen, Roy, and Vic collaborated to rob Gar blind at poker.

“Maybe work on your poker face a bit before trying to bluff with nothing but a pair of sevens.” Vic said.

“Or don’t,” said Karen, collecting the pot. “I like being able to foist off a week’s worth of chores.”

Dick shook his head fondly. Any chores that got passed around in the poker game would inevitably get rebalanced through some other shenanigans.

“Vic, any sign of them yet?” Dick asked.

Vic shook his head. “Not picking up any signatures from any sort of incoming vehicle. Maybe they’re getting here some other way?”

Right on cue, there was a flash of green light, and four people teleported onto the lawn.

“We’re here!” enthused a brown-skinned guy dressed in blue with what looked like a windsock on his head.

Raven opened her eyes and Kori let Donna out of an armbar as Dick walked over to greet the Beta Team.

“Welcome to Titans Tower.” he said.

“Thanks.” said the windsock guy. “Great to be here. I’m Windstorm, and this is Seer,”

He indicated a black girl wearing yellow robes and a hood drawn up to conceal her face.

“Allegro,” A black guy dressed in red with a cape and a sword, wearing sunglasses.

“And Techwitch.” A Pacific Islander girl, in practical black clothes and carrying a whole lot of tech stuff.

“We heard that Mindfang was giving you problems.” said Allegro.

“She can be a real pain.” said Seer.

“But we can take her!” Techwitch said cheerily.

“Well, that’s good. Those dice of hers have been driving us nuts.” said Gar.

Windstorm winced in sympathy. “Yeah, those things sure are a pain. Did you get the seaweed one yet?”

“Yes.” groaned half a dozen voices.

“Personally, I’ll take the seaweed over the ink geysers.” Seer commented.

“There’s a dice roll that makes ink geysers?” Roy asked.

“Yeah.” Allegro confirmed. “Thick as molasses, and it leaves your clothes more stained than a Congressman’s soul.”

“Great. What else does she have?” Roy asked.

“Well, we don’t think we’ve gotten to all of them, but we have a list of what we’ve encountered.” said Techwitch.

“Why don’t we step inside and do some planning?” Dick suggested.

\-----------------

A few minutes later, Windstorm was flourishing a pointer and going over a presentation that Techwitch had helpfully uploaded to the Tower’s computer, while the rest of them sat around on the couches.

“So, Mindfang and Trident.” he started. “About, oh, six months ago now, the two of them came to Earth in a beat up old space ship, and pretty much immediately started robbing stuff. They’re aliens, by the way, in case you hadn’t guessed.”

“We figured.” said Karen.

“I think they’re from a planet called Alternia.” Kori added.

“Oh, cool, we were going to ask if you had any idea where they might be from, since you guys know more about space than us.” Windstorm continued. “Anyway, they stole stuff, and made a big old mess doing it a lot of the time. At first they mostly hit high-tech places, probably to fix their spaceship, but later they just started taking whatever was valuable and shiny.”

“Wait, does their spaceship still work?” asked Dick.

“We think so.” said Techwitch. “It flies in-atmosphere, at least.”

“They tend to keep it clear of their heists.” Seer explained. “I think Mindfang might be a little paranoid about being trapped on-planet.”

“Anyway,” Windstorm continued, “they kept taking stuff, and we kept going in to stop them from getting a bunch of people killed while they were doing it, and eventually I guess they got tired of us chasing them off and they moved on. We looked for them for a while, but then we got caught up in chasing after Doctor Light, and that kept us pretty busy until just now.”

“You guys fought Doctor Light?” Vic perked up at that.

“Yeah, do you have any idea where he is now?” Karen asked.

“Last we saw him, he was trapped on an exploding cargo ship in Puget Sound.” Allegro casually informed them.

“I tried to get him out,” Techwitch said sadly, “but I can’t teleport people against their will unless I’m touching them, and he wouldn’t let me get close enough.”

“I have a feeling he probably survived anyway.” said Seer. “You know how it is with supervillains.”

“When did this happen?” Dick asked.

“The day before yesterday.” said Allegro. “You know, there really ought to be a word for that.”

“We weren’t really sure what the channels were to talk to you guys about it.” Windstorm said apologetically.

“We can set up a phone line.” said Dick.

“I mean, Spanish has a word for it, right? We can too. Yesteryesterday? Yestwoerday?” Allegro still wanted to know if there was a better word for ‘the day before yesterday’, apparently.

“There’s an archaic word for it. Ereyesterday.” Raven pointed out.

“Uh-uh, I’ve got it.” Gar spread his hands dramatically. “Previousterday.”

“Eyyy!” Allegro reached across to give Gar a high five.

“ _Anyway_ ,” said Windstorm, rapping his pointer pointedly on the screen. “Mindfang.” The screen started cycling through various blurry news photographs of the supervillain. “She’s an alien, and she’s got superpowers. She can make people fall asleep,-”

“Judging by some of her complaining, she has a much wider range of psychic powers that only work on members of her own species.” Seer cut in.

“-she can control luck, she’s got a set of magic dice that she can use her luck powers to get good rolls on, she’s got super strength, she might have some gadgets in that robot arm of hers, and she’s a pretty good fighter.”

“Wait, super strength?” Dick asked. They hadn’t gotten up close to her much.

“Yeah, super strength. Nothing like Super Man or even Trident, but she can rip a door off of its hinges with one hand and swing a barbell around like it’s a baseball bat.”

“While it’s still got some weights on it, even.” Techwitch added.

On the bright side, she’s got some weaknesses, too.” Windstorm continued. “She has to focus on you for a second to put you to sleep, and it doesn’t work on everyone.”

“We had noticed that.” said Dick. “She can’t get Starfire, Wonder Girl, Raven, or Cyborg, and she has a hard time focusing on Bumblebee.”

“Beast Boy’s usually out the second she sees him, though.” said Raven.

“Hey!”

“You are, though.” said Vic.

“Man, you guys are lucky.” said Techwitch. “Seer’s the only one of us she can’t get.”

“Mindfang also seems to have a limit on how much luck she can use before she has to sort of absorb more from her surroundings.” said Windstorm. That was news to the Titans.

“Really?” asked Donna. “How can you tell?”

“If you press her hard she’ll go through it all quickly when she has to make more and more unlikely events occur to stay ahead of you.” Seer explained.

“Yeah, and when she’s low those dice aren’t much of a problem, because she can’t control the rolls.” Windstorm added.

“One time we nearly had her cornered and she tried the dice anyway, and all it did was summon a giant weasel that danced around for a while.” Techwitch chuckled.

“She’s also, uh, Seer, how did you put it?” Windstorm asked.

“Her psychological weaknesses?” said Seer. “She’s reckless, impulsive, easily provoked, and often creates problems for herself because she assumes that she’ll be able to fix them later.”

“Also, if you so much as imply that you think she’s weak, she’ll try to take your head off.” Allegro added.

“What he said.” Windstorm agreed. “Any questions?”

“Have you tried getting those dice away from her?” Donna asked.

“Yeah, you can hang onto them for a bit but they go right back in her pocket the second you stop focusing on them.” Windstorm sighed. “Anything else?”

Nobody said anything.

“Right, we’ll go over the list of known dice rolls later.” Windstorm gestured dramatically with the pointer. “Trident!” The screen switched to a much better photo of Trident, who was actually looking at the camera even.

“Trident’s a lot simpler than Mindfang for our purposes. She’s just a rowdy girl who likes stealing things, can breathe underwater, and is really frickin strong.”

“Tell me about it.” Donna rubbed ruefully at the fading bruise on her cheek.

Techwitch winced sympathetically. “When the two of them went to steal that radar system from Fort Lewis, I saw her kick down a blast door.”

“She’s also really well adapted to living under water.” Windstorm continued. “We’ve seen her dive five hundred feet and come back to the surface in seconds with no ill effects, and she can outswim a speedboat. She’s a very skilled fighter, too.”

“She’ll throw that trident of hers sometimes.” Allegro added. “And she’s got a hell of a range.”

“What’s worked best when fighting the two of them is for one of us to keep Trident distracted and away from Mindfang.” said Seer. “That lets the other three focus on Mindfang and force her to use up her reserves of luck too quickly. I can usually predict what her dice are going to do, which also helps a lot.”

“But I’m guessing that this problem is bigger than just the two of them.” said Techwitch.

“You’re right.” said Dick, getting up to stand at the front of the room. “About a month ago, Mindfang and Trident started attacking high-value targets as part of a new supervillain organization called the Pirates.”

Windstorm nodded. “Mindfang does like pirates.”

“Although she doesn’t seem to be the official leader or anything, we’ve seen Mindfang calling tactical shots and holding the group together by force of personality. The rest of the group is made up of supervillains from Earth: Cheshire, Jinx, Icicle Jr., Gizmo, Mammoth, and Shimmer.”

“I’ve heard of most of them.” said Windstorm. “What about you guys?” he asked, turning to his team.

“I know Cheshire, from, uh, back in the day.” said Allegro. “But nothing about those other guys that you couldn’t get from the news.”

“The same.” Seer concurred. “I would appreciate the chance to go over any files you might have on them.”

“We’ll pull them up later.” said Dick, the part of his brain that had been trained by Batman filing Allegro’s comment about Cheshire away for later. “In any case, they’ve been moving around very quickly, and stealing some truly ridiculous amounts of money. We’ve had a hard time tracking them well enough to break up their operations in time, and when we have been able to catch up with them, we’ve had a hard time getting past Mindfang in order to capture anybody, which is why we got in touch with you, hoping you could help with that.”

“Superhero teamup!” Techwitch enthused.

“You can count on us.” said Windstorm cheerfully.

“Thanks. Now we just need to figure out how we’re going to find them. Do you have any ideas about what kind of target they might hit next?” Dick asked.

“Sort of. Seer?”

Seer adjusted herself into a lotus position and closed her eyes, focusing. A few moments passed.

“Uh, is something gonna hap-” Gar was cut off by Raven’s hand over his mouth.

“She’s doing something. Quiet.”

A minute or so later, Seer shook her head a bit and blinked starlight out of her eyes.

“Anything?” asked Windstorm.

“ I have a good feeling about Caesars Palace in Las Vegas tomorrow night.” said Seer.

“Yeah, that sounds like a Mindfang target.” Allegro agreed.

“Your powers of divination are impressive.” Raven told Seer. Seer looked rather pleased at that.

“Thank you. I’ve always had a certain knack for it.”

“Well then.” said Dick. “We have the rest of today, and it’s not even noon yet. Anyone up for sparring? Just to get familiar with each other’s powers and so on.”

Windstorm stretched and stood up. “Sounds good to me.”

\-------------------

A few hours later, after a productive (if also tiring) session of training and sparring, everyone was back in the common room, getting friendly.

Seer and Raven were discussing magical stuff; most of it was going over Dick’s head, but apparently Seer had greater expertise with weird Lovecraftian stuff, while Raven knew more about demonic stuff. Seer’s expertise in magic also extended to flying, wands that could fire energy blasts, and a really annoying touch of precognition, as they had all found out in the training room earlier.

Techwitch, Gar, and Vic had settled into an incredibly intense game of Mario Kart. She was probably the only person around who could actually keep up with Gar and Vic’s hyper-competitive video game skills. The three of them were clearly having a lot of fun, occasional vile cursing due to blue shells notwithstanding. Techwitch was, unsurprisingly, a tech specialist, with a wide array of computers and gadgets, and an ability to teleport she had apparently given herself by accident in a physics experiment gone wrong.

Over at the kitchen table, Donna, Karen, Roy, and Allegro were playing poker. Roy had been staring at Allegro for an entire minute trying to read his expression as he decided whether to call or fold.

“Call.” Roy finally said, laying down a full house.

Allegro grinned and laid down a four of a kind, winning the pile of pizza rolls and oreos that they were using for the pot.

“You are very hard to read.” Roy groaned, head in hands, as Karen dealt the next hand.

“So I’ve been told.” Allegro drawled.

Allegro was also rather hard to read in a fight as well as a poker game. He was very good with that sword of his; he could probably keep up in the highest echelons of the world’s martial artists even without his powers, considering how evenly matched he had been with Dick. He was also faster and more agile than any human being had a right to be, had maybe just a touch of super strength, and a sort of weird precognition or something- nothing like Seer’s, but he sometimes seemed to know what you were going to do before you did. After seeing him in action, Dick actually had an inkling of who he might be under the shades- but that wasn’t important right now. Maybe he’d check to confirm it later.

Windstorm sat down on the couch across from Dick and Kory, cracking open a soda.

“Thanks for having us here, by the way.” he said.

“Don’t mention it.” said Dick.

Windstorm was, appropriately enough, an aerokinetic, and a powerful one, too; at full blast, he could even hold Kori at bay. Judging by some of the readings from the training room, he could also make his own air in addition to controlling it, which would make most of the countermeasures that had been invented against aerokinetics useless.

Windstorm was also the Beta Team’s leader, insofar as they had one. They really did seem to just be four friends who happened to have superpowers and had decided to start fighting supervillains, just like any four friends who happened to have superpowers might do. (Come to think of it, ‘friends who happen to have superpowers’ was a pretty good description of the Teen Titans too.)

“So, that was a good training session.” said Windstorm. “I think we should be able to work together pretty well. Got any tactical ideas for the fight?”

“Well, based on what you said earlier, I think we’ll have Kori be the one to keep Trident occupied. The Pirates have usually been showing up to their operations by helicopter; if we’re waiting for them, can you keep them bottled up with your wind?”

“Oh, sure.” said Windstorm. “And then I can kind of herd Mindfang away from the rest of them too. Heck, I can just kind of herd everyone into whatever matchups we want.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” said Dick. “We’ll work out who gets to fight who and the rest of the tactical stuff tonight and head to Las Vegas first thing tomorrow morning to get everything ready.”

“Awesome.” Windstorm flashed Dick a thumbs up. “Honestly, it’s pretty neat to be working with the Teen Titans.”

“The same goes for your team.” said Kori. “It’s always good to get to know your fellow heroes.”

“Yeah, sorry we didn’t get in touch sooner.” Dick added.

“Hey, it’s okay.” said Windstorm. “I know you guys are busy. That’s the whole reason we started doing the superhero thing. The more people out there helping, the better, you know?”

Dick nodded. “We’ll get some stuff set up so you can call us in the future if you ever need help, or vice versa.”

“That sounds good.” said Windstorm. “We’ll take down the Pirates for sure. In the meantime though, we’ve got a little free time, so I think I’m going to catch up with the Mario Kart crew, before Techwitch forgets who the real champion around here is.”

“I heard that!” Techwitch called from over by the TV. “Apparently you don’t remember how our last couple of matches went. Bring it on!”

Windstorm went over and grabbed a controller, and soon the room was filled with the sounds of fun and laughter. Dick relaxed a little. It was nice to see the two teams getting along so easily. He found himself actually looking forward a little bit to the next confrontation with the Pirates.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note here real quick that this fic's version of Cheshire has been lifted more or less wholesale from the Young Justice cartoon, although the main source of inspiration for the DC side of things is still the classic NTT comics.

Adjusting his shades to block the Las Vegas glare (whoever had decided to build a city entirely out of neon lights and extravagant displays of wealth had a lot to answer for), Dave crouched behind a mailbox, waiting for the fight to start.

Dave and the rest of the Beta Team were waiting to ambush Mindfang and Trident, which felt very familiar, even with all of the extra people thrown in. Seattle’s least favorite duo of alien supervillains (which was also its _only_ one, to be fair) had started working with a bunch of regular old Earthling supervillains, and so the Beta Team was teaming up with the Teen Titans to take them down.

The plan that John and Robin had worked out was that when the Pirates showed up in a helicopter like they usually did, John would catch them in a tornado and then scatter them around so that the heroes could have their pick of one-on-one matchups, while everyone else teamed up on Mindfang, who was the most dangerous and trickiest of the bunch, what with her bullshit dice and luck powers. Dave was going to be fighting Cheshire; he wondered if she would still recognize him in his hero getup. She probably would, but it was okay; she wasn’t, like, _evil_ evil. 

The sound of helicopter blades started to cut through the noise of the city, and Dave tensed up in readiness. The chopper descended to hover above the street, a few ropes got thrown over the side for the Pirates to climb off…

And the wind suddenly rose and surrounded the helicopter in a swirling column.

“What the hell?” yelled someone in the chopper.

“Hi, Mindfang!” John called cheerfully as he rose into view. “We haven’t seen you back in town for a while. Do you not like us or something?”

“Hey, Windstorm!” Mindfang yelled back. “You just couldn’t leave well enough alone, huh.” She paused to gesture at the rest of the supervillains behind her. “Do you really think your team can take on all of us?”

“Yeah, do you?” Trident added, before hurling her eponymous weapon at John. Before the trident got to him, a golden lasso snaked out and snatched it out of the air, as Wonder Girl and the rest of the heroes stepped out of hiding, surrounding the helicopter.

“The real question,” said Robin, “is if you think your team can take on all of us.”

Mindfang looked around for a moment, contemplating. Then she grinned.

“Bring it on.”

Mindfang gestured dramatically, the way she always did when she was using her luck powers.

“The water main!” Rose warned, seeing it coming.

Everyone got out of the way as some improbable nonsense created by Mindfang’s powers made a big-ass pipe under the street break spectacularly and spray water everywhere.

“Icicle!” Mindfang snapped, and Icicle used his powers to freeze the water and encase everyone in a thick layer of ice.

Or rather, he would have, except that John had heeded Rose’s warning and scattered the water with a strong wind; all Icicle managed to do was get snow everywhere. But that was enough for everyone on board the chopper to debark and engage. 

Trident went for Dave, forcing him to backflip out of the way of a punch that left a crater in the street.

“Hold still, will you?” Trident groused, as she ripped up a street sign and swung it at Dave. 

In a single fluid motion, Dave drew his sword and sliced the sign in half, then caught the severed piece and threw it in Trident’s face. It mostly just seemed to irritate her. Trident responded in kind, throwing her piece of the sign at Dave with the force of an artillery shell; he narrowly dodged, then started backing away as she advanced on him. Trident was tough, but there was a fair bit of space for Dave to move around in, and if he could get to an alley-

Starfire suddenly streaked past like an emerald meteor and tackled Trident through a building.

Well. That took care of that problem. Dave looked around; everyone seemed to have recovered from Icicle’s distraction and started getting after their assigned villains. He looked around for Cheshire- there she was, on the roof of a nearby building.

Dave ran to the alley, parkoured his way up to the roof, and landed on the ledge at the edge. (Hey, nice rhyme.)

“Leaving already?” he asked Cheshire.

She whirled around and threw a shuriken at him. He blocked it, then jumped down off the ledge for better footing as he advanced. Unfortunately, he landed right on a cable that Cheshire had sneakily dropped, and fell hard to the ground.

Or at least, he would have, if he didn’t have superpowers. Most people who had observed him enough to notice something was off when he fought assumed that he had some sort of precognition, especially if they also knew Rose was his sister. But the truth was a little different. Dave made sure to note exactly where the cable was, then rewound time to just before he had jumped off the ledge. This time, he made sure not to trip, and as Cheshire drew her short swords, he went after her, blade flashing in a dizzying pattern of steel. 

It was a bit tricky trying to win a swordfight when you were also trying not to hurt the other person, but Dave was real fucking good at swords. Cheshire was good too, of course, but her training hadn’t been monomaniacally focused on the art of the blade the way Dave’s had been; he was slowly but surely forcing her back towards the edge of the roof. As Cheshire finally backed into the ledge, Dave sidestepped one sword, then slipped past her guard to thwack her on the hand with the flat of his sword and make her drop her other weapon.

Cheshire drew an explosive out of her belt and threw it _right at their feet_ , what was she, crazy? Dave rewound just as the blast started hitting him (it was a good thing rewinding fixed his injuries too). The second time around, he deftly caught Cheshire’s explosive on his sword and flicked it away before it could hurt either of them, but Cheshire took advantage of the opening to kick him in the chest and push herself off the roof.

Dave picked himself up and followed; one of the limitations of his rewind power was that he could only rewind the same time period once, so there was no avoiding that kick. By the time Dave made it down to the street, Cheshire was gone. Well, except for the slightly askew manhole cover. Dave went to lift it, then thought better of it and ran to the next one down the street, slipping into the sewer tunnel in perfect silence. As he had expected, Cheshire was waiting down by the first cover for an ambush. Dave crept up behind her, careful not to make any noise. He made it to within a sword’s length of her before she noticed him, and he easily knocked her remaining sword from her hands as she hastily struck at him. Cheshire whipped a shuriken at him, and flipped elegantly into the shadows as he blocked it, her white mask the only thing clearly visible. There was a pause.

“Strider.” she said neutrally.

“Nguyen.” Dave answered. So she had recognized him. That must have been why she did that stunt with the explosive; she had known he would rewind it.

“When I heard about this new hero Allegro working up in Seattle, I thought it might be you.” Cheshire said. “It was smart of you to pick a name that doesn’t hint at the time thing.”

“Gee, thanks.” Dave drawled. There was another pause.

“How’s Artemis?” Cheshire asked quietly.

“Pretty good, last I heard.” said Dave. 

“Well, that’s a relief.”

There was an enormous crash from out on the street, followed by the sound of an explosion.

“It sounds as if this particular villain team has run its course.” said Cheshire. “See you around, Strider.” Cheshire’s cat mask was visible for a second, and then she vanished. You could practically hear the little sting of mysterious-sounding music.

Dave sighed; he had never been able to figure out how she did that, no matter how much Bro had tried to make him. Well, at least she was out of the fight. He climbed back out of the sewers to see how everyone else was doing.

It turned out that everyone else was doing pretty good. Wonder Girl had her fight with Mammoth well in hand, and Shimmer was just trying to run away from Robin at this point. Jade was teleporting circles around Gizmo, who had lost a bunch of his gadgets and looked incredibly frustrated. Starfire and Trident’s fight had destroyed three buildings and part of the street (man, was it a good thing they’d had the block evacuated ahead of time or what?), but it looked to be finally winding down, and Trident looked pretty haggard. Cyborg was blowing up Icicle’s ice as fast as he could make it, and Jinx and Raven were engaged in some kind of mystical duel which Dave was about seventy percent sure that Raven was winning.

That just left Mindfang, who was being as difficult as ever. Still, as Dave ran over to join the fight, he noticed that she was starting to get backed into a corner. Sure, she’d managed to chase off Bumblebee, who had apparently had the misfortune to be mistaken for a tasty prey animal by a bunch of different birds(though on the bright side, she was also kicking their tailfeathers). But everyone else was doing okay. Mindfang had skipped up a fire escape to avoid Beast Boy and was standing on a landing; dodging arrows and gusts of wind and Rose’s energy blasts, while ripping off chunks of railing to throw at people. She suddenly gestured dramatically, using her luck powers again.

“Glass!” Rose warned, and the shower of broken glass that some stray attack shook free from the building above was harmlessly intercepted and blown away by John’s wind.

Speedy fired two more arrows at Mindfang. Both of them just happened to be intercepted by chunks of ice that had been blasted away from Cyborg and Icicle’s fight, but the second one had been a flashbang; Mindfang swore like a sailor as she rubbed at her eyes. Beast Boy took the opportunity to flit up to her landing in the form of a hummingbird, then shift into a goat and headbutt Mindfang down the stairs; she landed hard at the bottom, still cursing. Beast Boy bleated triumphantly and charged down after her, but Mindfang had a second to focus on him now, and he collapsed asleep halfway down.

One of John’s wind gusts tossed Mindfang in the air and blew her ten yards into an alley. John, Rose, and Speedy closed in, firing blasts and arrows to keep Mindfang on her toes so she couldn’t put anyone to sleep. Dave came up and stood next to them ready to parry anything Mindfang threw at them.

He took a glance around at the rest of the fighting. It was almost over; Icicle, Mammoth, and Shimmer were out for the count, Jinx looked like she was about to pass out from the strain of whatever kind of magic fight she and Raven were having, Gizmo was vainly trying to escape as Jade kept teleporting in front of him, Bumblebee was chasing off the last of the peregrine falcons that had decided that she looked tasty, and Starfire had Trident pinned to the ground with one arm twisted up behind her back. 

Mindfang was the last villain standing, and she seemed to notice it. She looked around frantically for a second, then closed her eyes and focused.

“She’s gathering more luck!” John warned. “Take her down before she finishes!”

A gust of wind, one of Rose’s lighter energy blasts, and a net arrow streaked in and nailed Mindfang, but she kept her focus, and with her new reserves of luck, she threw her magic dice one last time. Dave watched them as they landed to see what number came up.

All eight of the eight-sided die came up as eights. Oh shit, they’d never had that one before. Dave braced to see what it would do.

Mindfang was suddenly wreathed in glowing blue energy, blue wings and a vicious looking curved sword appearing from nowhere. Speedy’s net fell away in tatters, and Mindfang took flight- holy shit she was fast. She effortlessly dodged everyone’s attacks as she streaked like a bolt of lightning towards where Starfire had Trident pinned. Speedy tried to intercept her with an arrow, but she just swatted it aside and slashed him across the ribs- oh shit, that was a lot of blood. Dave rewound time and lunged in to parry Mindfang’s blow before it could hit Speedy; it felt like hitting an oncoming semi, but he managed it.

“Heads up!” John yelled as Mindfang dove at Starfire. She heard the yell and dodged the swing of Mindfang’s sword by a hair, but she had to let go of Trident to do it. Mindfang snagged Trident’s collar and streaked off into the sky; an energy bolt from Starfire narrowly missed her as she flew off, too fast to pursue.

“God dang it.” John shook his head. 

“That was a new dice trick.” Rose remarked.

“Hey.” said Speedy. “Thanks for the save.”

“Ah, it was nothing.” said Dave.

“Make it stop!” someone yelled behind them. They turned around to see Gizmo, who had had his remaining robotic spider limb thingies and his jetpack reprogrammed by Jade to throw him around randomly.

“If you insist.” said Jade, grinning wickedly. She turned off the devices just as Gizmo flew above Cyborg; he fell straight into the hero’s waiting fist. Raven wandered over from where she had bound up an unconscious Jinx in some kind of magical black rope. The fight was over.

Robin surveyed everyone for injuries as they gathered. Nobody had anything worse than a bruise or a split lip, so that was a win.

“Cheshire?” Robin asked Dave.

“We wound up in the sewers and she did her spooky vanishing into the shadows thing.” he answered. “Sorry.”

Robin shrugged. “It happens.”

“Besides,” John said more cheerfully, “five out of eight isn’t too bad.”

“Yeah, and without her team we’re hopefully not going to have any problems with Mindfang for a while.” said Bumblebee. “Which is good, because I’m getting real sick of her making birds of prey go after me.”

“I’ll see if I can help next time.” said Beast Boy, still a little woozy from his nap. “I can usually scare them off if I turn into a big eagle or something.”

The special taskforce responsible for taking supervillains into custody showed up to start hauling everyone away. John slipped his phone out of his pocket to check the time.

“We should probably get back to Seattle.” he said. “This was fun. We should do it again sometime.”

“Speaking of which.” said Robin. He pulled a set of four communicators with Ts branded on them out of his belt and handed them out. “These work to get ahold of us from anywhere in the world. Feel free to call if you ever need any help.”

“Or if you just want to hang out or something.” said Cyborg.

“Thanks.” said John. “You can call us anytime you want, too.”

“It was nice working with you.” said Starfire. “Thank you for your assistance.”

“No problem.” said Jade. “It was great to work with you guys!”

“It’s good to know that there’s more people out there that we can count on.” said Wonder Girl.

“I’ll be sure to send you that book about the rituals of the Dark Sorority.” Rose told Raven. “I found it quite helpful for the kind of divinations you were talking about.”

“Thanks.” said Raven. 

“See you guys around.” said John cheerfully as they gathered around Jade. The three of them grabbed on to her, and then in a familiar flash of green light, they were back at John’s house, in the backyard.

Dave stretched and enjoyed the feel of the cool evening air; it was especially nice after being in Nevada for so long.

“Good evening!” John’s dad greeted them enthusiastically. “I saw you on the evening news. You guys did great. I made brownies to celebrate.”

“Awesome!” said Jade. The four of them rushed into the kitchen, and Dave smiled a little to himself. Saving the day and getting victory brownies with your friends. Did you really need anything else in life? 

(Probably, but it would do for this evening.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dave and Cheshire know each other because Bro and Sportsmaster were pals in the 'child abuse is the best martial arts training' club. I'll probably elaborate on it in some future fic.


End file.
